Poison
by derpette-Waffle
Summary: Old habits die hard. - ((tw: self-harm and suicidal thoughts))
1. Chapter 1

Painful as they are, the memories are mostly locked away in my mind, not allowed to resurface entirely –but I still remember.

When I was seven, I scraped my knee on the playground. It stung badly, shooting up through my leg and my eyes started to tear up. I didn't want to cry, but I couldn't hold it back, either. I sat there on the wood chips for a moment, silent tears rolling down my chubby cheeks. I heard an older boy laugh at me from the jungle gym, and I only cried harder, small sobs escaping every now and then. The teacher was nowhere in sight, as if I could see them through my wet, blurry eyes.

Someone shouted at me –"What are you, a little girl? Crying's for sissies and babies!" More laughing, endless, daunting… And then the crying stopped, and since I haven't allowed myself to shed tears in front of others.

When I was eleven, I liked a boy in my class –I won't mention his name. He was maybe my first serious crush: I found myself blushing whenever he'd look at me. Others caught me blushing, too, and I heard the whispers and snickering around me. I retreated into the coat I hadn't put away in the cubby. After class I'd always go see the Lovely Boy, trying to make friends, and he was friendly enough to not push me away at first. But a dance was coming up, and, naïve and stupid, I thought I saw my perfect chance. I asked him if he wanted to go with me –he asked if it would be as friends, but no, I wanted it to be more like that 'dating' thing I'd heard so much about. He cringed –"Ugh, you freak!"- and turned away, down the hall. I made it back through the crowd of oblivious students, unnoticed.

That afternoon I went to use the toilet, and ten, maybe fifteen minutes later I limped out with a bloody nose and a busted lip, and my eyes already swollen half shut. I was covered in bruises that no one would ever know about, because it was winter and I could get away with being completely covered.

By sixteen, I was known not to act my age. My mum called me Peter Pan; my classmates called me a slew of heinous names that I still wasn't certain was in their right. I was an outcast but a social person by nature –and I kind of just wanted to fit in. I had a friend who was liminal between the more and less popular kids, and he offered to be my bridge into young society. "Do you want my honest thoughts?" It had been my own choice to nod, all too eagerly. "Be someone you're not. I know all those programs and everything say different, but you have to blend into the popular kids. You have to admit, you are pretty weird, and no one really likes weird. Right now you can't expect to stand out in a good way."

He looked all proud of himself as he pat me on the shoulder and summed it all up. "Fake it to make it," he grinned broadly, and I attempted a weak smile. And I tried –God knows I tried to make it with the cool kids. I didn't know what was wrong with me.

I was twenty by the time I realized it all made sense. It was too late to change what I was –a freak. And a faggot freak, at that. I was making a few friends, now that I started posting videos online. YouTube gave me something to do with my life as it slowly spiraled downward, kept me distracted from the descent. But it was around that same time that I sort of broke –it was the first time I tried to end what little life I had. I spent a week in a looney bin and released to try again, but I was too much of a coward straight away. When I wanted to take the blade to my throat, I'd take it to the fat on my arms and thighs and stomach: never cut too deep, never let them show. After the suicide attempt, and seeing my mother cry over me and the bandages around my wrists, I made an empty promise to never do it again, and went on to suffer in silence.

No one outside my immediate family ever knew about the attempt, and even they didn't know that I kept on cutting because the thoughts never really went away. I was never put on medication –"it's just a phase, and he'll grow out of it." The doctor hadn't even acknowledged I was still there, but I might as well not have been, in my state.

Thoughts of death never escaped me, and at first I wanted them to go away, but when they became a sort of constant in my life I almost welcomed them like a friend.

When I was twenty-two, I found a new friend, a new constant; its name was Dan, and he was my light. And for a while, it was enough.


	2. Chapter 2

I was wrong to fall in love with Dan. I wasn't surprised: anyone would be mad not to fall for him, but I fell too deep, and I knew it wasn't good that I did. Guys aren't supposed to fall in love with other guys –I'd learned as much in the bathroom, that first time and all the times that followed.

Even stranger than my infatuation was what it manifested itself in. Most men my age would get themselves lost in wet dreams of their fantasy lover, but my dreams never got that far. I would think about Dan –just Dan- smiling at me, and it made my heart flutter every time. In my dreams, I didn't feel guilty for it, and I never imagined Dan in anything less than his pants. My desire wasn't sexual: I just wanted to hold his hand without him pulling away, press my lips to his and feel them pressing back. I didn't want his body, I wanted his mind and heart and soul and everything that made him as beautiful inside as he was outside.

I was falling in love, and the moment the dream ended, the nightmare began.

I'd never applied the whole sinful aspect to my apparent sexuality. The threat of eternal damnation was hardly a threat at all when this world was proven to be a hell, anyway. No, what kept me hating myself was knowing that this anomaly only brought pain. I could almost still feel the bruises, twelve, thirteen, fourteen-plus years after the first beating. At the time I'd been too young to understand it; now, wiser if not any smarter, I know.

Dan was oblivious to how I would watch him, mesmerized and weighted with guilt. Across the room when he ate his breakfast; sideways glances when we sat beside each other and I wished I could reach out and take his hand; longing gazes behind his back, wishing he was mine.

I was wrong to love him, but I couldn't help it.

The pain and tearing in my heart drew me back to an old friend, and I knew there was no need to wallow in emotional agony when I could release it with the blood in my veins.

The day I started cutting again wasn't my finest. I wasn't proud for having taken this route, but it was a road I knew well and could travel blindly with the lines growing in tendrils across my arms and stomach and legs: a hidden roadmap, carved into flesh, curves intersecting over and over as they wound about on a broken body.

It makes it sound almost like art. This isn't art. This is a torture that scars emotionally and mentally as much as physically. It's a pain I would never wish on anyone, not even those who helped guide me to it.

* * *

_One… two- ah!... three…_

I was starting to run out of room where Dan wouldn't see. I'd begun delicately tracing over the older wounds, some healed for years but never fading entirely. I can pick out every line marred into my skin. I hadn't always been keeping count, but there had to be at least a hundred by now: small, shallow, but there.

I was sitting on the floor in my underwear, propped up between my bed and my mirror, forcing my eyes onto this disgusting and scarred body as I pulled the blade over my skin. I was bleeding, and watched as it dripped onto the carpet, knowing I would have to clean that up once this was done and over with. It wasn't over until the instrument itself decided it was done with me and my useless flesh. My arm pivoted against it and the wound was then upside down, blood pooling at the slit and dripping rhythmically to the floor: more cleaning for later.

I pressed my blade into the circumferential scar on my leg. I'd made careful marks a long time ago to map out what points I couldn't pass, not without it being noticed. Every now and then an unconscious sound of pain would pass my bitten lips, but I was playing my music just loud enough that Dan wouldn't hear, even through the thin wall separating our bedrooms. And my door was always closed and locked.

Sometimes I'd get a call from home; sometimes my family would ask, very genuinely, if I was okay. I'd tell the best lie I could conjure, even as I sliced into my own skin. They'd never hear or never want to hear the small sound I'd bite back.

Over the music I could barely hear footsteps stop outside my door. Unless there was a murderer in the house, it had to be Dan. My door was locked; I didn't need to move.

"Phil?" he called, voice nervous and rising above the music playing. I didn't move but to drag the thin metal against my flesh. My eyes watered but I didn't allow myself to cry –never again.

"Phil, please let me in." He sounded desperate, pleading, but I couldn't open the door now. I blinked slowly and wetness leaked onto my cheeks. I hurried to wipe them away, but smeared my face with blood. "Phil!"

"Hang on," I choked, rushing to clean myself up and get dressed. I hadn't wiped all the crimson stain from my face, and could only hope it didn't leak from fresh wounds through my shirt. I waited in front of the mirror or a moment as I waited until I was presentable. My vision was ringed in darkness but I didn't let it keep me still.

"Phil!" He was shouting now; he must not have heard me. I looked back into the mirror and was about looking as okay as I could be then. If anything I would say I had a cold and would excuse myself to bed for the night. I could only take so much of Dan's beautiful face in one sitting –I loved him, so much, and that was the problem.


	3. Chapter 3

"Yes, Dan?" I was leaning in the doorway of my bedroom, looking as much a mess as ever. He looked amazing without even trying –like, specifically not trying. It was an incredibly lazy day, and he hadn't changed into real clothes or straightened his hair. I ran a finger through my own damaged black strands. Years cloaked with dye and ironed straight left nothing but split, fraying ends and a rough feel. Sometimes I just wanted to shave it all off and start over –just another thing for which I just wanted a fresh beginning.

Dan just stared at me a moment, as if he hadn't expected me to answer when he'd been shouting for me outside my bedroom. "I…" he stammered, shifting and visibly uneasy. I winced, hating that I made him so. "I just wanted to make sure you're okay, and, are you?"

The truth here would've been just as easy to tell as the usual lie. I'd long ago accepted that I deserved this pain, that no one needed to feel bothered or uncomfortable by it because this was just part of my life, just like YouTube or the bump in my nose. I was numb to it and just went through the motions, not quite feeling it anymore but compelled to keep it up. It did release pain, but it was taking more and more slices through my flesh to do so.

I felt sort of dizzy, head reeling and I realized I'd probably gotten up too fast. Pressed for time as I felt I needed to lie down, I went for the safe route with the typical "I'm fine, don't worry," and a "I'm kind of tired, I might just head to bed" for good measure.

Dan nodded slowly, his beautiful face swimming in my vision. He must've noticed the glazed over look in my eyes, because next thing I knew he was grabbing onto my shoulders to steady me. He was starting to ask what was wrong when I let out a quiet yelp as he squeezed the wounds too tight. I yanked myself out of his grasp and nearly fell backwards into my room, closing the door and locking it in Dan's face. I felt horrible for that as he started shouting at me, but I collapsed onto the bed before I could apologize.

* * *

_I could've died last night._

In the morning, I wrote in my journal, the one I'd been keeping since I was seven. I rarely wrote anymore, always too busy or just too tired, but without it I would hardly remember everything leading up to this point, for better and for worse.

_I threw out the sheets –they were covered in blood. I was surprised I didn't bleed out._ A pause in my writing. _Journal, I don't know what I would think of dying last night. Should I have been more careful? If fate had taken me last night, who would I be to question it? Does that mean I would rather be dead, Journal? I don't think so. I've gotten so used to only hurting myself that I haven't actually considered death in a while. _Another pause_. Now I am._

I tucked it back under my mattress. I would go out later that day for a new sheet set.


	4. Chapter 4

As the next few weeks went on, things seemed to only get worse. Ever since I posted my most recent video, I was getting questions left and right, dozens to hundreds of tweets asking if I was okay. I almost cancelled my live show because I knew what would flood the chat –surely enough, it did.

I couldn't escape questions asking if I was alright. I tried to tell them that yes, I was fine, but it was maybe the least convincing lie I'd told in a while. And at one point I almost let the truth be known, that no, I wasn't alright, I was drowning. I had to end the show early to spare all involved. They knew me as how I acted on camera: bubbly, full of life and happiness. I must've been an excellent actor, and it took all my strength to put up that front. They never needed to know me as I knew myself.

I wanted to go to bed early that night, dragging my feet to my room as I couldn't be bothered to lift my feet off the ground. I stopped at the doorway. Dan was in his own room, playing music and probably in ignorant bliss. There were always times I wanted to tell him everything –he had unwittingly saved my life before, maybe if he knew what was going on, he could do it again. I'd do almost anything for that freedom, but couldn't sacrifice Dan's happiness for my own selfish desire.

I didn't knock on his door or try to talk to him, or reply when he texted me a few minutes later but with a quick message that I was going to bed. I slumped in front of the mirror, peeling excess clothing off until I was nearly exposed to my reflection. I knelt down and plucked my worst best friend between calloused fingers. I bowed my head down as any consciousness left the muscles in my arms and thighs, and slowly my mind slipped into the routine as well.

* * *

That night in particular, I was tormented by guilt and pain. I recalled every tongue-lashing, every harsh word spoken against e; they echoed and rattled against the inside of my skull and left throbbing pain in its wake. I trudged on, though, enduring all the painful, scathing words that had been thrown my way over the years.

_"Fake it to make it"_ to a struggling adolescent. And I tried, always teetering between hiding away and letting the real me come through. I'd been naïve: it earned me three slits.

_"Ugh, you freak!"_ to a confused young boy. I was in love with Dan, my best friend, and it was a terrible thing to be. I'd been wrong: four more.

_"Crying's for sissies and babies!"_ to a small, small child. I never did cry, until now, fat tears falling down my blotchy cheeks. I was weak: another six or seven.

_"It's just a phase, and he'll grow out of it"_ to a broken young man. When? When would I no longer need to run a sharp edge through my skin to feel something but pain and guilt anymore? I was self-destructive, but I didn't mean to cut then as deep as I did.

I watched the blood flow from my arm, and I wanted to think something poetic of it, but it was almost as if for the first time, I was feeling the physical pain. As the bright redness gushed from the wound, every other scar –old and new- suddenly felt alight on fire. I let out a strangled cry as I gripped onto my arm, still bleeding.

I tried to stay calm –I thought about Dan, and his eyes and his smile and all the brightness about him. He had his days, but didn't we all. He had this aura about him that made me feel safe, even from myself. Dan might've made no use for me to hurt myself, because even platonically, I knew he loved me. For a while that hurt, because I loved him so much more than that, but his friendship was enough to get me by before: I'd stopped altogether for a time, before I fell in love. Then it was back to the blade for me.

I stared down at the small, but deep, slit in my arm. I had never cut below the designated boundary before, and it was near to my wrist. I fucked up. I fucked up bad.

My chest was tightening; I couldn't breathe. With what little air there was to use, I needed to make a hasty decision. It would likely be the wrong decision, but I'm sorry: I wasn't ready to die.

"Dan!"

There was a brief pause, then footsteps pounding on the floor, one door swinging open before my own. Dan could only stand there for a moment after letting out a choked sound, and I watched as tears sprang to his eyes. He pulled his shirt off as he rushed over to collapse to his knees at my side. By then I was on the ground, far too weak to sit back up.

He wrapped his shirt around my arm, squeezing tightly and trying to prevent any further blood loss. He whipped out his phone –he was calling an ambulance. I let my eyes slip closed for a moment, but he shouted for me to stay awake, to stay with him. I did.

I didn't expect him to go with me in the ambulance, squeezing my hand and telling me everything would be okay. I tried to believe him –I really did.

He kissed one cheek and stroked the other with his thumb, staring into my unfocused eyes. "I know. I know how you feel about me, and I'm so fucking sorry I never told you how I feel the same way. I do, though: I love you. And I'm gonna help you get better."


	5. Chapter 5

That was the second time I'd spend a week in a psychiatric ward, but it was considerably more enjoyable. Dan was sneaking fast food in to me, because neither of us wanted to eat what the hospital cafeteria was serving. When the urges really hit and I was getting anxious and antsy, he got on my side when I'd refuse sedation, climbing into the bed with me and holding me tight until I could calm down. He let me talk when I wanted to, and listened; when I wasn't up for conversation on my end, he tried to divert the attention away from the thick bandages on my wrists and the locked door to the near bare room. I was on suicide watch, but he helped me forget about that –it was almost like a normal week in our home.

The day before I was set to go home, I woke up a few minutes before Dan did. He was propped up in the chair next to the hospital bed because it was too small to fit the both of us all night, though I really wanted to be wrapped in his arms right now. Those scrawny arms made me feel safe. I just watched him while he slept, convincing myself that it wasn't creepy, that I was just admiring how peaceful he looks in his sleep. It was wrong that he should be trying to comfort me when I was the one to do him wrong.

"Dan…" I hadn't even noticed I'd said anything until he was sputtering a bit, waking up but maybe not entirely. I gave him a small smile, trying to convince him and myself that I was okay. "Morning. How was your sleep?"

"Great," he yawned, stretching his arms above his head. "Yours?"

I nodded and stared back down at my body laid out in front of me, covered in a sheet and a hospital smock beneath that.. I glanced at him again but couldn't look at him for long. "Dan, I-… You know I didn't try to kill myself, right?" For as often as I'd considered it, I hadn't wanted to die.

He smiled a little at me and leaned forward to kiss my forehead; I resisted leaning into the warm touch of his lips. "I know." He sat back in the chair. "And you know that even if you did, I wouldn't think any less of you, yeah?" I nodded a lie. He reached out and took my hand –I felt the sparks run all the way up my arm and set my heart alight. He brought it up to kiss my knuckles one by one –sweet little kisses. "I'd just miss you terribly."

I was released the next day without a word from the doctor who'd been assigned to me and my issues. A nurse handed me a bottle of tablets that I knew all too well as antidepressants that wouldn't do shit to help. I threw them in the bin on my way out, Dan following behind me.

Dan didn't ask about why I cut, and I was grateful for that. In the end, when I thought about what could be an answer, all that came to mind was that I deserved it. I deserved the pain, but was too afraid to let others inflict it on me. I was paying whatever consequences of whatever I had done on my own terms.

We didn't discuss how he'd told me that he loved me, and knew I loved him too. By how we'd been acting toward each other since, though, it seemed we sort of fell into the roles of each other's boyfriends. It wasn't like what I'd expecting in my first relationship; it was like we were still just best friends, but with kisses and more cuddles. That was nice.

One day, shortly after my release from the hospital, he sat down next to me on the sofa and pulled me in close. I smiled softly and lay my head against his chest, reveling in his warmth. "Morning," I sighed into his shirt.

"Morning. Hey, I want to talk to you about something."

I immediately jumped to the worst case scenario. Did he want to break up? Was I doing something wrong to make him realize he didn't actually love me? It wasn't implausible, I just didn't know what I could've done already to upset him out of wanting to be with me. I didn't voice any of those concerns, though. I was learning to think calmly as I'd known to look calmly for years. "Yeah?" I asked carefully, not expecting but still fearing the worst.

He kissed the top of my head –that relieved my tension significantly. "I know it's a sensitive topic and that isn't going to change any time soon, but it's something we need to talk about." He wouldn't mention my scars directly, and I wasn't sure whether or not I preferred it that way. I nodded, letting him go on. "I just want you to know that this –all this- it doesn't mean you're not still the strongest person I know."

I huffed out a bitter laugh and he rubbed my shoulder, continuing. "They're more like badges of honor. You were in pain, so much pain, but you still stuck it out and are here today. I saw them, babe… that's a lot of times for you to hate yourself. I'm sorry I didn't notice sooner… didn't help sooner."

I shook my head firmly. "You didn't know because I didn't want you to know. The only people who ever knew I had issues like this was just a bit of my family, when I tried to kill myself." I let out a shaky breath, not meaning to tell him about that. I pressed my face into his chest. "They didn't know I kept… kept thinking about it. But it got worse."

"When did it start to get worse?"

I felt like I was talking to a shrink. "When… When I realized I was in love with you…"

His voice sounded hurt. "Oh." He didn't ask why I'd fallen deeper into it when I realized I loved him. "You know, I used to think about hurting myself, too. A while ago, before we met."

It hurt my heart to know that Dan had ever felt remotely what I'd been feeling when I felt the urge to drag the blade across my skin. "What- What stopped it?" Maybe he had some advice, a way that I could stop needing to hurt myself, too.

He rubbed my back and held me closer as he hummed a response. "When I was sixteen, I starting liking this guy... He didn't even know I existed, but he still somehow managed to help me learn to love myself, and I started to fall in love with him, too –like, really in love." He sighed heavily, noticeably weighted. "Thing is, I didn't know at the time that he was hurting, too; that he wasn't loving himself like he deserved, like I loved him for a long, long time."

He pushed me up a bit and stared into my eyes for a long moment, and I blushed at the love I found in them, a love that must've mirrored my own. He took my hand and squeezed it gently, stroking over the back of it, never breaking the gaze between us. He gave a small smile –a real, genuine smile that I loved so much.

"And now I wanna fix that."

* * *

That night –Dan right by my side: a support that, in that moment especially, I desperately needed- I flushed my blade down the toilet. I tried to flush with it the urges and horrible thoughts, but those remained and I almost –completely unconsciously- regretted any of this. My skin was burning and my vision narrowed in a ring of blackness, and I couldn't breathe-

Dan wrapped his arms around my waist and kissed just behind my ear. It took a moment of just standing there in silence, wrapped in his arms and love, but gradually I started to calm down. I lay my hands over his, squeezing his fingers gently. I sighed; Dan was proud of me. He was here, truly here, now, and with him I could finally have a chance at purging the poison from my mind. "I'll be okay," I promised.

He squeezed me tighter. "I know."


End file.
